Thursday, 31 March 2011

Thanks to David Saunders for sending news of an upcoming event at the Getty Villa:

Restoring Ancient Bronzes in the Nineteenth Century

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze on view through September 12, 2011 at the Getty Villa, this one-day program considers the wider context of bronze restorations in the nineteenth century, utilizing both archival research and technical analysis. With the Apollo Saettante as a starting point, restoration work in Naples will be of primary interest, but speakers will also consider comparable activities throughout Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

Key themes include methods and materials used; approaches to ancient surfaces and re-patination; the development of technical knowledge; the role of modern bronze foundries and industrial production; and individual restorers and their working relationships.

To summarise: Sponsored by the comitato “Cincinnato”and the cultural association“Radici”, there will be a conference on 1st April to present a series of proposals designed to save Pompeii from ruin. These are the proposals:

To restore the amphitheatre, so that it can be used as a venue for local social and cultural events;

To start a kind of museum/workshop, where ancient objects will be display but also where objects can be manufactured for sale using ancient techniques and materials;

To involve the local Comune in the administration of the excavations.

Much of this has been put together by a local businessman, but in consultation with some local archaeologists. At the moment the initiative has a lot of momentum, although it's not clear to me whether the people at the SANP have been involved at all (does anyone know?). There will be a live event on 7th May, transmitted on the internet, in which people around the world will participate to show their support for Pompeii.

I admit to not really knowing very much about all this, so can anyone provide any more details? I think this would be a good topic for discussion, too. Does anyone have any views about it that they would like to share?

Pompeii: Art, Industry and Infrastructure looks afresh at these facets of Pompeiian society, highlighting the traditionally overlooked area of industry.
It is normally priced at 35.00 GBP but is available for the great price of 26.95 GBP from now until publication.

Something else I've discovered just today! MiBAC has a YouTube channel, with (mostly) TV reports on different sites/issues. There's nothing on Pompeii yet, but, if you don't have access to Italian TV where you are, this is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Per informazioni :

Ufficio informazioni 0818575347

Sorry for the very late notice. In collaboration with the FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), today (Sunday the 27th) I'm opening to the public the archaeological sites on the North Slope of Vesuvius, i.e. the post-79 Roman baths at Masseria De Carolis in Pollena Trocchia (see photo below) and the so-called Villa of Augustus in Somma Vesuviana. If you're around Vesuvius, please come. If you're not there yet, but you'd like to visit either or both sites in the next weeks or months, please get in touch with me and I'll open them for you (3395671190). If you want to see us in action, please come during the dig at Pollena, this Summer we'll run from the 13th of June to the 15th of July, with the usual nice mix of Oxford and Italian students.
All the best,

Friday, 25 March 2011

Italy has a new culture minister, and there have been a few interviews with him published in the Italian press in the last couple of days. Here is an English-language summary from Adnkronos:

Pompeii tops new culture minister's agenda
Italy's new culture minister said reversing the frail state of 2,000-year-old ancient Roman city of Pompeii is a priority in his agenda of giving culture more importance amid criticism of neglect under prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.
In an interview with Italian daily La Stampa published in Friday, Giancarlo Galan said his first task will be to "confront the (culture) crisis starting with Pompeii."
Galan on Wednesday moved to the Culture Ministry from the Agriculture Ministry to take the place of Sandro Bondi, who came under fire following a series of collapses at Pompeii late last year, including part of its frescoed House of the Gladiator.
Critics say Pompeii's state is emblematic of the wider state of Italian culture that they claim has suffered from deep funding cuts.
The day Galan started his new job, his ministry announced 236 million euros in fresh funding for Italy's culture for 2011. Eighty million euros is earmarked for the country's numerous archeological sites. At Pompeii the ministry said it will hire new staff to safeguard the fragile site.
In a separate interview with Naples daily Il Mattino published Friday, Galan said continuous laments about Pompeii is "hypocrisy,"
"During the war it was bombed. Stop complaining about the collapse of the House of the Gladiator. There isn't only Pompeii," he said in the interview.

Monday, 21 March 2011

The newly published Ancient Graffiti in Context, edited by Claire Taylor and Jennifer Baird, has several references to the use and context of graffiti in ancient Pompeii. The launch of the new book was covered in the press last week here.

Titus wuz here: Ancient graffiti begins giving up its secrets

Cast your mind back to the history books you read in school, the ones that covered classical Greece and Rome, and you’ll probably find yourself thinking about people like Pliny and Plato, Seneca and Socrates, men who seemed to spend the bulk of their days orchestrating epic battles and formulating complicated theories about shadows in caves.

It seems less likely that you’ll recall the anonymous Athenian who, some 1,500 years ago, snuck out in the middle of the night to inform the world that a certain Sydromachos had a backside “as big as a cistern.” Likewise, the fact that someone named Titas was “a lewd fellow” will almost certainly have passed you by.

As for the pictures in the clomping textbooks of old, these would have consisted of grainy busts and urns, not boomerang-shaped penises or disembodied testicles. But times have changed, and there they are, on page 94 of “Ancient Graffiti in Context”: the free-floating genitalia of Hymettos, carved into the rocks there by someone with time on his hands and a loose grasp of human anatomy.

I am ashamed to admit that I didn't know about the existence of this Antiquarium, but then that's not so surprising if it's been shut for 20 years ... Apparently it contains wall-paintings from the various Stabian villas, as well as finds from the various necropoli found in the ager Stabianus. How sad that these objects are shut away.

Catrin Huber is interested in the relationship between imagined painted and actual architecture, and in how wall paintings can re-negotiate role and function of rooms and buildings. Her exhibition at the British School will combine wall painting with drawings of imagined spaces. For Hall of Fictional Space she imagined bringing together a diverse group of painters from ancient Roman Pompeii, Herculaneum and Oplontis. The imagined group had an animated argument about wall paintings for the 21st century. The fruit of this debate will be a wall painting that responds to the arguments made, and to the specific characteristics of the foyer at the British School at Rome. The exhibition space is located under architect Edwin Lutyens' grand façade at the British School. In contrast to this bright and spacious outdoor area, the exhibition space evokes a cool, subterranean chamber which is transformed by Huber’’s wall painting.

Catrin Huber lives and works in London. In 2008, an Abbey Fellowship at the British School at Rome enabled her to deepen her relationship with ancient Roman painters and their work. Huber has exhibited in Great Britain (e.g. Barbican Centre London, Sartorial Contemporary Art London) and internationally (Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, Kunstverein Wilhelmshöhe Ettlingen, RMIT Project Space Melbourne). She has won numerous awards, residencies and scholarships from bodies including the DAAD, the Royal College of Art (John Crane Travel Award) and the County Baden-Württemberg (Cité Internationale des Arts Paris). Huber studied painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe and the Royal College of Art London.

Those of you in the US may have a chance to hear Andrew Wallace-Hadrill talk about Herculaneum during the next month. Here are the dates and details of his lecture tour:

'Herculaneum: Living with Catastrophe'.
Herculaneum, which shared the fate of Pompeii in the eruption of Vesuvius, has been the object of a major conservation campaign sponsored by Packard Humanities Institute and directed by Dr. Wallace-Hadrill since 2001. New discoveries made in the course of the project provide dramatic evidence for major geological activity dating back a century before the eruption, and to a long drawn-out catastrophe with which the inhabitants lived.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

From yesterday's La Repubblica, news that Andrea Carandini, president of the Consiglio superiore dei Beni culturali has resigned from his post, claiming that it is impossible to protect Italy's cultural heritage in the face of massive budget cuts:

Monday, 14 March 2011

I've had an enquiry from a friend who is part of a group visiting Pompeii 31st March - 1st April. She wondered whether they were likely to see any excavations taking place. I said I thought it was a bit early, but I was wondering whether there are any special exhibitions on currently that they ought to be directed to. (They are mainly classics graduates).

There are a whole bunch of new videos about Pompeii on the Discovery Channel, clips of the new Discovery Channel programme on Pompeii which was supposed to air in the US yesterday. I forgot to blog about this (it's been a heavy couple of months!)! Did it actually air yesterday? Was it any good?

This paper focuses in excluded masculinities during the beginning of the Principate. Two interrelated topics will be discussed: first we will focus in two concepts, dignitas and infamia and then we will discuss different types of evidence to understand Roman masculinities. The main idea is to explore how Epigraphy - the graffiti from Pompeii – can contribute to discuss more pluralistic approaches to the Roman masculinities. The Epigraphic evidence is used in this paper to help us to rethink social relationships and Roman identity in a less normative experience and to study excluded past.

Time for one of my periodic pleas for contributors to Blogging Pompeii to update (i.e. write something on) your profile page, so that others have an idea of your general or specific research interests. Please do this if you're serious about being part of the Blogging Pompeii community. And please include a photo!

We have now reached the maximum of 100 contributors. If there is anyone who doesn't want to be a contributor anymore, please let me know so I can offer your spot to someone else ...

Thursday, 10 March 2011

A first-century Roman villa discovered in the heart of Assisi has recently made press in La Reppublica. (Thanks to Ted and Alessandro for alerting me to the article.) The newspaper calls it "the new Pompeii" — perhaps a bit overexuberant! Judging from the description (copied below) and beautiful detail photos, the villa contains some noteworthy bits of architecture, mosaic, and Third-Style painting. It sounds to me as if, in composition and motifs, the painting may be vaguely similar to (if certainly less elaborate than) that in the Villa Imperiale (especially cubiculum B; see Ling, RP, fig. 70, or the VIP website) or the House of the Priest Amandus (see the photos at PompeiiInPictures; the inclusion of pinakes in the upper register [not visible in the PompeiiInPictures photo] sounds similar). The black "socle" at Assisi (perhaps actually a predella? see photo 5 in the article) containing a narrative frieze of figures recalls the Farnesina black triclinium. However, the wallpaper style of the garden painting (incredible! shown in photo 2) seems Fourth-Style. In any case, a really spectacular set of paintings. Any readers' thoughts on the subject would be welcome!

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

From yesterday's Corriere del Mezzogiorno, criticism of the abandonment of the amphitheatre at Pozzuoli. I really like this amphitheatre, it's a great place to visit. So I am sad that it's being neglected. But I'm not convinced that the major area of concern should be that public events haven't been held in it since 2008! I'm not against performances in this amphitheatre (or in the theatre at Pompeii, or elsewhere), but it makes me a bit worried when local organisations see only the potential for profit, and not the value of preserving Italian heritage for its own sake.

This paper shares the remains of extraordinary wooden furniture covered in ivory relief decorations. The discovery was made during the new works (July 2007 ‐ Spring 2009) for the excavation, conservation and enhancement of the area of the Villa of the Papyri carried out by the Superintendency and financed by the European Community within its Regional Operative Program (P.O.R.) for the Campania Region.The exceptional nature of this discovery lies particularly in the high quality materials used and the intricacy of the relief decoration, full of religious symbolism prevalently used in connection to Dionysius.

During the HCP work for the regulation of rain and spring water in the southern corner of the ancient beach of Herculaneum, excavations were undertaken on an area of the beach that had not been previously investigated. In the area between the southern corner of the Suburban Baths and the south wing of the House of the Telephus Relief. Around one metre of solidified mud from the 79 A.D. eruption was removed. This revealed an imposing collapse of timbers which, thanks to the conditions of their burial, were perfectly preserved and not carbonized. The position of the fall indicated that they belonged to the primary and secondary vertical beams from the roof of the so-called “Hall of the Marbles” (room 18) in the House of the Telephus Relief. The investigations showed that the roof seemed to have overturned due to the “sucker effect” caused by the first mud flow which ripped it from the tops of the walls, overturning it and hurling it onto the beach. In fact, numerous tile fragments from the roof and tufelli from the upper parts of the walls, which had been torn off together with the timbers, were found below the beams in direct contact with the sand of the ancient beach.

Large beams with a rectangular section and smaller beams with square or circular sections emerged from the blanket of mud surrounding them, together with other timber elements including planks and decorated panels, the latter probably part of the room’s false ceiling. Marks left by the carpenters were clearly visible, as were the joints, on all the elements. On the basis of a first analysis of the beams, a study which will produce important information regarding Roman carpentry, it may be suggested that this was a pitched roof with trusses. The recovery of planks painted in red or blue and of diverse wooden panels with parts of a wooden coffering and frames with hexagons and triangles in relief, painted white, black, blue, red and gold, revealed the presence of a richly decorated false ceiling which could find correspondence in the pattern of the room’s complex marble floor.

After having brought all the elements to light they were numbered and a 3D laser scan was made of the entire collapse, so as to have a three dimensional model of the finds. The individual elements were then removed, noting all relationships which could be of use in the study phase for the reconstruction of the roof. Each find was then photographed, measured and the joints and any traces of colour recorded where present. With the assistance of the conservators from the Pragma cooperative each find was then cleaned and treated with biocide. They were then individually wrapped and identified with a number assigned at the time of their discovery.

Monday, 7 March 2011

Having completed, as part of the HCP, the cleaning and putting back into operation of the ancient sewer running below the basalt paving of Cardo III, work was undertaken on the secondary sewer network in the east arm (room 57 ex 66) of the peristyle of the Casa dell’Albergo. It was decided to create a new sewer in order to drain the rainwater from this part of the house and from the roofs of adjacent houses (House of the Skeleton, House of the Brick Altar, House of the Bronze Herm) into the sewer below Cardo III. The creation of this secondary branch with the positioning of the pipes and inspection wells meant that a rescue excavation was carried out along its line. The initial cleaning of the east arm of the peristyle in the House revealed a make up for what remained of the floor in use in 79 A.D. This make up, within which there was material of Flavian date, was removed. Below was an earlier floor surface of very compact beaten-earth that was brown in colour.

This layer abutted the perimeter wall of the Casa dell’Albergo in opus incertum of cobbles and lava stone bonded with mud. A well was cut into the beaten surface probably in order to draw from the water-table. Its diameter was circa 1.80 m, only half of which appeared in the trench. This hypothesis also seems to be supported by the presence of three holes next to the well-head, one containing stones to be used as wedges. These must have housed poles that were probably part of a pulley. The well was sealed by a conglomerate of tufa stones bonded with weak lime mortar. The removal of the brown beaten-earth surface produced pottery and painted plaster fragments datable to the mid 1st century A.D. Therefore, in the mid 1st century A.D. in the area that was to become the peristyle of the Casa dell’Albergo, a perimeter wall already existed separating the house from Cardo III and which in this zone enclosed a space, probably open, with a beaten-earth floor in which a well had been cut. The latter was filled when the Flavian floor was laid, in phase with the construction of the portico, perhaps during an overall restructuring of the house.

A thin brown layer came to light below the beaten-earth surface, the result of the pedogenesis of the compact cinerite deposit from the Pomici di Avellino eruption of Vesuvius (1760 a.C.). The only other evidence of anthropological activity in this thin layer was a shallow pit containing a layer of burning and baked clay, with several large stones on its southern edge. The excavation of this hearth produced fragments of black glaze pottery dating to the end of the 3rd-beginning of the 2nd century B.C., the earliest finds from the excavation.

In view of a possible intervention to restructure part of the modern town in the area of Via Mare and the reorganization of the northern corner of the archaeological park, a feasibility study was undertaken which also included the excavations of the Basilica Noniana, which in the 1960s had brought to light the long side facing onto the upper Cardo III (south side). The study showed that there were many advantages to be gained from the complete excavation of the building which could help to resolve the serious problems linked to its preservation, due to the present state of the partial excavation and the instability of the section (so-called west scarp).

In 2009 work was undertaken in order to gain information useful for the drawing up of the project. It began with the cleaning of the entire area and the partial emptying of a number of Bourbon cuniculi in order to gaining information on the plan of the basilica, the level of preservation of the structures and decorative elements and in order to check for the presence of buildings abutting the long side of the basilica that was still buried (north side). The latter was of vital importance for the definition of the perimeter of the hypothetical excavations. Of particular interest was the emptying of several metres of a cuniculus running along the north perimeter wall of an apsidal room on the west side of the basilica. The north wall of this cuniculus was in fact formed by the wall of this room and still preserved its pictorial decoration with a rich IVth style architectural composition, whose focal point was constituted by an edicola framed by fluted Ionic columns. At the centre of the edicola was a painting of a sacred landscape.

The pictorial decoration originally rested on a high dado of marble crustae, removed in the Bourbon period. The securing of the plaster was extremely complex as it was on the point of collapse due to the lack of these marble slabs. The emptying of a cuniculus at circa 1.90 m above the ancient floor level of the Basilica Noniana was also of interest. After having cut through the northern perimeter wall of this building by the western corner, it continued outside of the latter. The aim of this intervention was to check on the presence of other buildings on the basilica’s north side. The excavation revealed the presence of another wall directly abutting that of the basilica. This belonged to a building of which three rectangular rooms, with opus signinum floors and simple white plaster wall facing, were partially brought to light thanks to the emptying of the cuniculus.

At the end of this investigation it can be stated that another building, of unknown size and function, abuts the north side of the basilica. The simple opus signinum paving and white-plastered walls of the identified rooms suggest that these were service rooms for a public building or servants quarters or workshops linked to a domus.

As part of the work in the Basilica Noniana, a Bourbon cuniculus was excavated for a length of 25 m. From documentary sources it is known that it ran for circa 110 m along the decumanus maximus as far as the theatre. In this phase of the investigations, the emptying of the cuniculus was undertaken in order to gain some idea of time and method which would help with the planning of a subsequent excavation of its entire length. In fact, the complete emptying of the structure, as well as creating an interesting underground link between the theatre and the open-air sector of the archaeological park, would consent improved aeration, probably forced, with a good probability of lowering the concentration of radon gas detected in the theatre. Moreover, from a scientific point of view, the intervention would permit the recovery of important topographical data regarding the relationship between the Basilica Noniana and the buildings or spaces around it and in relation to the fundamental problem of identifying the forum.

The first few metres of the cuniculus had an irregular line, with the presence of offshoots and widening at the sides relating to the exploration and removal of the marbles from the remains of the four-faced arch which stood in front of the basilica and which, following the 79 A.D. eruption, collapsed onto the latter’s façade. The excavation also revealed that the entire area in front of the Augusteum and the basilica had been persistently explored both by the Bourbon excavations and in earlier periods. The emptying of the cuniculi, undertaken for the first time using stratigraphical excavation, showed that the area had been crossed by tunnels in three different phases, at different levels and of different sizes. The investigation of this sector provided important confirmation of Bellicard’s plan, which placed a porticoed area to the north of the quadrifrons arch which is very similar to that visible today on the south side of the decumanus maximus. In fact, having crossed the decumanus the cuniculus seems to align itself along the latter’s west sidewalk, at the base of which ran a small channel for rainwater collection.

The sidewalk had a kerb of parallelepiped tufa blocks, on which the portico columns rested, whilst the ambulatory was paved in opus signinum. The columns were built of opus testaceum faced with red plaster on the lower third, whilst the upper part showed no traces of any facing. The excavation also identified a second column, and thus it was possible to calculate the spacing (circa 2.50 m). The emptying of this cuniculus went well beyond expectations in providing data relating to the difficulties and time necessary for a complete excavation of the remaining 85 metres leading to the theatre. The work also confirmed the existence of a portico along the decumanus north of the basilica, showing once again the quality of the recording undertaken in the 18th century through the exploration of the cuniculi.

As previously reported, the Pompeii exhibition that has been making the rounds of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore has now arrived in New York. It opened this weekend just past, and is well worth a look if you're in the area.

Reviews have now started coming out, and you can read some of them here. They are good - deservedly so, because it is a nice exhibition. For my taste, however, there is too much focus on the plastercasts of bodies, and in general I think the choice of objects is not particularly original or new. Each to their own, however.

The previous museums to host this exhibition also had useful accompanying websites (see, for example, the New Zealand version), but I can't find anything like this on the New York site.

The exhibition presents the different aspects of a Roman bronze statue of Apollo as an archer—its discovery in Pompeii in 1817 and 1818; how it was made in antiquity; and how it was reassembled after it had been discovered—but also highlights the variety of approaches that were employed, both in the laboratory and the library, to examine these issues.

A conservator’s primary goal is to address any factors that are or could potentially be damaging to an object, and even before beginning work on the Apollo, we understood that the drapery hanging from its arms needed attention. It was clearly placing a significant strain on the figure, and we later discovered that its weight is around 80 pounds—almost as much as the rest of the statue. As the project developed and we studied these drapery ends in detail, we gleaned valuable insights about the restoration of the ancient statue after it had been unearthed.

Interesting article on how the latest edition of popular guidebooks like Lonely Planet and the Michelin Guide have started to ignore smaller sites like the amphitheatre at Capua and even Oplontis. Shame on you, guide books!